Table and Prayers

Sara: We got a new (to us) table and chairs, given to us by my aunt. It’s the first set either of us have had that matches and doesn’t look like they belong in 1979, so I’m very excited to have “our” first piece of furniture together.

Justin also turned O-L-D at age 35, or at least that’s what he says. I took him to a dinner theatre for his birthday present. We shared the table with an older couple we hadn’t met before. When our salads came, we reached the awkward “are we going to pray together or not?” moment. Justin and I discreetly made the sign of the cross, and quietly said our prayer. When we looked up, the couple was doing the sign of the cross as well, and asked where we went to church. This started a great conversation about life, and we were delighted to hear about their 55 years of marriage. They spoke several times about how the family prayed together, so it made me reflect a little further on how Justin and I pray together.

Before I met Justin, it was always really awkward to ask to pray with any of the guys I dated. Most were not Catholic, and we had very different beliefs about prayer. I wanted to pray together, but I never really knew how to start in a way that would not end in a debate about what Catholics believed.

Thankfully, Justin and I met at a retreat, so prayer was never a taboo topic. Very quickly after Justin got back from his mission trip to Costa Rica (he left just two weeks after I met him!), the Chaplet of Divine Mercy entered our conversation, inspired by St. Faustina. In her diary, St. Faustina says God promises great mercy for sinners who pray this devotion. I had been praying the Chaplet on and off for years, ever since I had been given a pamphlet by a priest. Justin had been praying it daily for at least six years as well.

Justin: I remember the first time we spoke about it. We were driving in the car, on our way to visit a friend in the hospital who had just had her tonsils removed. Somehow the topic came up and Sara said she prayed the Chaplet every day. As soon as she said it, I knew I liked this girl.

Sara: So, even before we were dating, we got in the habit of praying the Chaplet together in a group with whoever was around. Now we pray the it on the phone together each night before we go to bed. We also make time for personal meditation together on the weekends and are certain we spend time together with God.

We still continue to discuss how we will pray both together as a family and as individuals after we get married. We look forward to being able to pray together in person each night after we get married – not just simply on the phone.

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